


True and False

by ephemera (incognitajones)



Series: Asterisms [15]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: F/M, Organized Crime, Undercover as a Couple
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-02-18 20:51:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13108311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incognitajones/pseuds/ephemera
Summary: “It’s an undercover mission, which strictly speaking you are neither qualified nor cleared for. But Captain Andor needs a partner, and I have no suitable Intelligence assets currently available.”“I’ll do it,” Jyn said.Cassian and Jyn go undercover to sabotage a criminal organization suspected of selling Rebel operatives to the Empire. For the mission, both of them must play at being people that they despise; but they find certain elements of their roles uncomfortably easy to fall into...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this last year as a fill for a [kinkmeme prompt](https://rogueonekink.dreamwidth.org/1084.html?thread=652092#cmt652092), but though I adored the premise it kept getting pushed back in the queue by other stories that would take less time and effort to complete. However... I did promise it would be finished eventually, and posting a new work for the new year seemed fitting.

“Kaytoo said you wanted to see me.” Jyn hadn’t been happy to hear it—a summons from General Draven was rarely good news—but she’d swallowed her reluctance, like the good little Alliance soldier she was trying to be, and reported to the briefing room.

“Yes, Sergeant Erso.” Draven looked up from the glowing holotable. “Captain Andor and I have a mission to propose to you.”

Jyn glanced at the corner where Cassian preferred to lurk; sure enough, there he was, standing in his usual guarded posture, arms crossed over his chest. She frowned, a little put off by the fact that he hadn’t said anything about this earlier. He’d seen her at breakfast in the mess this morning, couldn’t he have given her a heads-up? And why was he wearing his blank, impassive interrogator’s face? But he didn’t speak, so Jyn looked back at Draven.

“A proposal?” That didn’t sound like Draven. He wasn’t big on voluntary assignments; his idea of a choice was letting you decide how high to jump after he gave the order.

“It’s an undercover mission, which strictly speaking you are neither qualified nor cleared for. But Captain Andor needs a partner, and I have no suitable Intelligence assets currently available.”

“I’ll do it,” Jyn said. 

Cassian shifted forward into the beam of light welling up from the table, his face harsh and stark in the cold blue radiance. It emphasized the slight creases in his forehead that told her he was angry; she wondered whether it was at her or Draven, until he spoke. “Not so fast, Erso. There’s more to it. Listen to the whole plan before you decide.”

There was her answer. Why was he being so dismissive? Did he agree with Draven that she was unqualified? She narrowed her eyes at him.

Draven cleared his throat. “As I was saying. The mission requires a humanoid agent who fits a certain profile.”

“A certain profile,” Jyn repeated, knowing she must sound like a slug-brained idiot but still wondering why Draven would choose to come to her of all people.

“Someone who has a certain skillset but seems... fragile.” Draven’s mouth pursed, as though he wanted to revise his choice of word. 

A gruff bark of laughter broke from Jyn. “I don’t look fragile.” For two-thirds of her life she’d had to fight the perception that she was, deliberately cultivating a hostile aura that would tell anyone considering taking her on to step off. Just because she was small didn’t mean she was easy prey.

“With all due respect, General, I told you this was a bad idea,” Cassian muttered. 

“But I can, if that’s what you need.” Jyn straightened her shoulders and met Draven’s appraising eyes. She tried to radiate confidence. All it would take were different clothes, a little less aggression—kriff it, she could pull off looking delicate. 

She refused to look at Cassian. It wasn’t like him to be overprotective. He knew she could handle herself, for Force sake, they’d fought side by side enough to prove it. He must think she wasn’t capable of being a spy, that she wouldn’t pull her weight undercover. Too bad; she wasn’t about to let anyone else steal this mission out from under her nose. She’d cover his back whether he wanted her to or not.

“An identity which Captain Andor has built up over the past few years has an immediate opportunity to infiltrate a smuggling ring with Imperial ties. We suspect them of involvement in the disappearance of several Rebellion operatives in the last six months.” Draven looked down at the holotable, tapping restlessly at the controls. If Jyn didn’t think it was impossible, she might almost have thought he was uncertain. “Your role would be to serve essentially as bait, someone who could be a valuable piece of merchandise to them. Captain Andor will introduce you to the group as a transitory romantic partner.”

A working girl, Jyn translated. That wasn’t what she’d been expecting, but she ignored the cold trickle of doubt worming its way down her spine. She’d worked with plenty of prostitutes in her days as a fellow petty criminal; she’d just been marketing different skills.

“And then sell me to them, I assume,” Jyn said. She was a little proud of how unconcerned her voice sounded. 

“Probably, yes. But both of you will have to be flexible and ready to improvise. It’s a rough and incomplete plan, and the Alliance won’t be able to offer much support once you’re undercover.”

“Like I said, I’m in.” Jyn finally looked back at Cassian. His shoulders were tight with suppressed anger, and his face was somehow even more stony. _Well, too bad, Cassian—sucks to be you._

"Thank you, Sergeant Erso." Draven actually looked relieved; he must have been expecting her to put up more of a fight. "I'll let Captain Andor brief you."

 

Cassian stalked off down the corridor, not bothering to adjust his stride so that certain people who might have slightly shorter legs could keep up. It was another signal that he was truly angry at her.

Jyn refused to chase after him like a child. Instead she stood in the middle of the hall and spoke to his retreating back. “I’m not going anywhere until you slow down.”

Cassian didn’t look back at her, but he stopped and his shoulders drooped out of their stiff, aggressive posture.

Jyn hurried to catch up with him, circled in front of him and grabbed the sleeve of his jacket so he couldn’t get away as quickly again. “What’s going on? Why were you such an asshole in front of Draven?” she demanded.

A terrible possibility rose from the unacknowledged hollow space in her heart and she swallowed around the knot it created in her chest. She had no right to feel this way, no reason to feel hurt. No matter what nonsense she'd spouted off to Cassian about trust going both ways, he’d kept himself alive for twenty years by relying on no one but himself (and occasionally, Kay). Still, she couldn't stop herself from asking, too plaintively, “Don’t you trust me to keep your cover?”

“Stop,” he said immediately, and gripped her shoulders with both hands, warm and steadying. “It’s not a question of that, Jyn. You know I trust you.” 

Relief flowed through her like a cool wave. Jyn moved a little closer and dropped her voice. “Then why are you being so negative? I spent years living undercover, Cassian, I can manage a short-term mission.” She didn’t care who saw them fighting; she’d disagreed with Cassian in front of the whole base plenty of times. But for some reason this felt different, not like the kind of conversation she wanted to have in the middle of a busy hallway.

Cassian scoffed low in his throat, and his mouth folded into a tighter line. “You had aliases, not covers. Liana, Kestrel, Tanith—they were all Jyn Erso by another name.”

“How the kriff can you be so sure of that?” She pulled away, shrugging his hands off her shoulders, and crossed her arms defensively.

“Because I've seen your record. Did you do anything under those names that you hadn't done a hundred times before as Jyn?”

She paused to think about it, because she really, really wanted to tell him yes. Unfortunately, she couldn’t. She shook her head reluctantly.

“This is going to be completely different.” He angled his body forward, pushing her a step back, deliberately using his height to overshadow and intimidate her in a way he almost never did. She lifted her chin and glared at him, refusing to back down. “Once we leave the base, you won't be Jyn anymore, and I won't be Cassian. We’ll most likely have to do things that Cassian and Jyn would never choose to do. If I'm not positive you understand that, I can't do this with you.”

In other words, he was still trying to warn her off for her own good. Jyn was starting to become seriously annoyed. “Then _tell_ me exactly what I’m in for,” she pressed. “Give me the full briefing, all the gory details.” She still wouldn’t change her mind—after charging head-on into a suicide mission, pretending to be a prostitute sounded almost like a holiday—but he didn’t have to know that.

Cassian hadn’t cut his hair since Scarif; Jyn had been watching it grow longer and shaggier for the past few months. Now it fell forward over his face and helped to hide his expression. She wished she could push it back out of his eyes so she had a better chance of seeing what he was thinking.

He sighed. “Come on. I’ll show you what we have.”

 

Cassian went straight to his desk and grabbed a datapad, unlocking it with his thumbprint and code. Jyn perched on the edge of his bed and let her eyes flicker quickly around the room. It was bare, impersonal, less homey than her hard bunk in the shared barracks. Something in her chest twinged, but she ignored it.

He scraped his desk chair across the floor to sit beside her. Their knees almost collided, but he kept his eyes on the screen as he tapped at it, pulling up the file he wanted. “These people are criminals, pure and simple. Their main market is buying and selling sentients. Whether you call them slaves or indentured workers doesn't matter—if you need brothel staff or gas miners who don’t get paid and can’t leave, the Keppro Group will provide them for you.”

He flicked a finger across the pad and handed it to Jyn so she could study the likeness of a human male, about fifty she guessed, lit up on the screen. “That’s Barrett Nabeshin, who killed his superiors and took over the Group about a year ago. He diversified the business into bounty hunting; now they’ll also find specific individuals for you.” 

Jyn stared at the glowing image. Nabeshin looked like a low-level technocrat to her, not a crimelord. Of course, in her life as a petty criminal Jyn had tried hard to avoid the notice of anyone that highly connected. Maybe they all looked like Imperial accountants. 

“We think he’s taken a contract from the Empire to hunt our operatives in that sector. Three of them have dropped off the screen in the last six months. Only one of them was new; the other two were experienced field agents with years under their belt. There’s no increased Imperial intelligence presence in the system to explain the disappearances either.” Cassian pinched the bridge of his nose in the way he did when he was exhausted but didn’t want to show it. She wondered how late he’d worked the past few nights to prepare this analysis. 

“Nabeshin is intelligent, but predictable: a typical blackmarket flesh peddler. His personal tastes are… conservative. He prefers human sexual partners, young and slight, so he can push them around. That’s where the second agent would come in.” 

Cassian still wouldn’t look at her. Jyn rolled her eyes at his refusal to admit the obvious, but she’d humour him for a while longer if necessary.

“I’ve arranged a meeting under my cover identity to purchase a contract for some factory labourers. I need another agent to come with me as my escort. I’ll imply that I’m getting tired of them and ready to move on. If we can find the right type of person, given what we know of him, Nabeshin is almost certain to step in and offer to take them off my hands. If not, I can make him an explicit offer to sell.” He shoved a hand through the hair falling over his eyes, pushing it back.

“We know the Group has its headquarters and holding facilities on an orbital station. But they’re careful to cover their tracks, and there are so many private satellites in this system our sigint hasn’t been able to determine which one it is. The other agent will have a device implanted so that I can track them to the station.” He took the datapad out of her hand and blanked the screen with another code. “Then it’s a matter of causing as much damage as we can during the extraction. We might even pick up a lead on what happened to our agents, but I’m not hopeful about that. They’ve been missing for too long.”

“The tracker works whether I’m alive or not, right?” Jyn guessed. 

A muscle in Cassian’s jaw flexed. “It won’t come to that. And I still haven’t signed off on you as the second agent.”

“Who else can you ask?” she demanded. “Come on, Cassian. For Draven to have approved this, you must be truly desperate.” She gripped his arm, digging her fingers in and willing him to look at her. “And it sounds like I’m exactly the kind of toy this scumsucker would love—small and breakable. Even you must’ve had that impression of me at first.”

Cassian actually laughed out loud, a short and brittle sound. “I never thought you weren’t dangerous. Remember, I saw what you did to Melshi’s face with a shovel.”

“You’d be one of the few, then.” Jyn shrugged and let go of his arm. “I’m used to it, and believe it or not, I can make it work to my advantage. I just don’t like to.”

He studied her carefully and thoroughly, his gaze running over every millimetre of her from the crown of her head to her booted feet. Jyn waited, clinging to her patience and suppressing the urge to keep arguing her case. She knew Cassian’s pragmatism would win the battle over whatever was making him reluctant, once he had time to accept that it was the only workable option.

“I won’t go easy on you,” he warned. “I can’t.”

Was that supposed to frighten her? Jyn folded her arms over her chest. She was starting to think she understood what lay behind his reaction to this assignment. “Are you worried about whether I can take it, or whether you can do it?” she asked. 

Right on cue, Cassian produced an offended expression, but she was sure she’d seen a flicker of panic in his eyes. Jyn pressed her moment of advantage. “Because plenty of people have treated me like bantha shit. Bring it on.”

“Really.” He telegraphed his skepticism with a raised eyebrow. “Something tells me you didn’t let them get away with it.”

“Well, no,” Jyn admitted. “But for a mission, I can put up with it. For a while.”

He dropped his chin to his chest and sighed. “There’s no way to make you see reason, is there?”

“Absolutely not,” Jyn said, smug at her success in getting Cassian to finally give in.

“Fine.” He looked back up at her in that way he had with his gaze half-hidden under lowered eyelids, and she felt suddenly nervous again. “But if you’re going to be under my command, that means doing what I say, when I say it. No arguing. Learn to take an order, Erso.”

Jyn scoffed, though her mouth was dry. “I can do that, easy. Just don’t give me any stupid orders.”

Cassian’s mouth quirked up on one side and the tense atmosphere between them broke into something more comfortable. He pushed his hair out of his eyes again and sighed. “I’ll see you at 0800 tomorrow morning. We’ve only got two days to prepare. Be ready to work hard.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the long wait! Turns out writing something with an actual plot is even harder than I thought it would be... hopefully I've figured out the bits that were sticking.
> 
> Please note the change in warning status; since this is a work in progress I decided to err on the side of caution. For readers who'd like additional information, I'll be putting more detailed notes about the content of each chapter in its end notes. I'm trying to be as comprehensive as possible, but feel free to let me know if there's anything specific you'd like noted.

Jyn had never visited the Intelligence supply depot before. Somehow, even on a base the Alliance had occupied for less than four months, it looked like a room where junk had accumulated over decades. Metal shelves lining the walls were stacked with bins of clothing, shoes, cosmetics, and everything you’d need to transform into someone else. A weapons locker stood in one corner next to a toolchest, its multiple compartments labelled with unfamiliar abbreviations. The surface of the only table was invisible under layers of datapads, identichips, and scattered droid parts holding down piles of flimsi printouts, plus a standard terminal and a sleek, charcoal cube Jyn recognized as a military-grade Imperial encryption machine. Her fingers itched to get a hold of it.

“So this is the famous Sergeant Erso.” Jyn didn’t see the speaker until she swept her gaze down. A grey-blue Skrilling, about a metre tall, was holding out a thick, three-fingered hand. 

Jyn shook it, a little confused by the greeting. “Famous?”

“In some circles. Let’s just say I’ve heard a lot about you.” 

Jyn wondered from who. She hoped Draven hadn’t been complaining about her.

“Operation Bazaar is a go,” Cassian broke in. “Jyn needs wardrobe and scandocs by end of day tomorrow. She doesn’t have a suitable cover identity yet, so we’ll have to forge one.”

“I’m Lieutenant Grifka,” the Skrilling continued, serenely ignoring Cassian. “Logistical support for Military Intelligence, and informal medic.” She clambered up to sit on a high stool set in front of the worktable. “Captain Andor tells me this will be your first undercover mission?”

Jyn nodded. 

Grifka’s nasal folds creased in an expression Jyn didn’t know how to read; she couldn’t tell whether it was skeptical or encouraging. “Well, everybody’s got to start somewhere. Let’s get your tracking chip taken care of first. What specs, Andor?”

Cassian rattled off a series of numbers.

“For that range, it’ll have to be subcutaneous.” Grifka spun on her stool and picked through drawers in the toolchest until she found what she wanted. Snapping on a pair of gloves, she attached a long, thick needle to an injector. “Sorry for the jab, but we can’t risk having it too close to the surface of the skin. Any other active implants?”

“Just a standard contraceptive.”

“How old is it?”

Jyn did the mental math—Saw had taken her to a free clinic on Onderon when she was eleven, so that was... “Twelve years.”

“Good, we won’t need to replace it yet.” Grifka circled one finger in a signal to turn around and Jyn did, tugging down the rear waistband of her pants. 

The Skrilling’s gloved hand on her hip was cool—noticeably lower than human body temperature—which Jyn was grateful for; it was a welcome distraction from the injector as it punched into the fleshy curve of her ass. She took a deep breath and asked Cassian, “You getting chipped too?”

The corner of his mouth tucked up into the tiny smile she only saw when he was truly amused. “I had one implanted the day I signed on with Intelligence.”

Of course he had. Jyn bit her inner lip.

“All done.” Grifka wiped the injection site with an antiseptic that stung for an instant and then chilled as it evaporated from her skin. “So, what kind of cover am I putting together for Erso?”

“She’s going to be my paid escort.”

Grifka tilted her head back to stare up at Jyn. “Hmmm.” She leaned in and sniffed at Jyn’s upper arm, inhaling deeply. Jyn held herself rigidly still. “Are you sure? That doesn’t seem like the best choice.”

“Why not?” Jyn fired back, twisting her head over her shoulder to glare at Grifka. Why did no-one think she could do this? 

Cassian said flatly, “I know it’s not optimal, but it has to work. What’s the problem?”

Grifka sniffed at Jyn again, her nasal folds wrinkling. “She’s young and healthy, good-looking for a mammal. That accent’s Core all the way. And don’t tell me you can cover it up,” she said to Jyn. “Changing your speaking voice is a lot harder than you think.”

“So what?” Jyn was still bristling. 

“You’re out of Spero’s league. He couldn’t afford what someone like you would cost. And Nabeshin will notice; he knows the market for sex workers.”

“It wasn’t my first choice either.” Cassian’s jaw was so tight and taut with strain that Jyn thought he must be gritting his teeth. “But it was the best we could come up with that didn’t require weeks of prep. You know how short our window is.”

Jyn’s fists clenched and she pressed them against her thighs in an effort to stay calm. She wasn’t fond of being discussed in the abstract while she was there to hear it. “Who’s Spero? And what’s the bloody rush?”

“Dorian Spero is my cover identity,” Cassian said. “Corrupt manufacturer. Thinks he’s a big shot when really he’s just a small-time crook, you know the type.”

Yeah, Jyn had met more than a few of them in her loner days.

“And the rush is thanks to the Death Star,” Grifka said. “Destroying it wiped out a ton of Imperial resources—troops, skilled labour, not to mention all the money and tech they sank into building that thing. It’s left a huge hole in their tactical capacity.”

“So they’re scrambling to fill the gap,” Jyn said.

Cassian nodded. “Right now, they’re desperate for more conventional bombers and fighters to replace the Death Star’s firepower. Which means even someone like Spero has the chance to land a shipbuilding contract he needs to buy workers for. And that’s how we’re going to get face to face with Nabeshin. It’s a sizeable enough deal he’ll want to check the financing in person.”

“Is the contract legitimate?” Jyn asked.

Grifka’s wheezing laugh hissed through her nasal tubes. “As fake as a Wookiee’s wig. I forged it myself.”

The realization they might be purchasing actual living beings had somehow not occurred to Jyn before this moment. “Then what’ll happen to the people we buy?”

Cassian smiled. “We’ll have them delivered to a certain spaceport with a sympathetic administrator. Once they land, they’ll be free to do whatever they want. Find a real job, join the Rebellion, go home…”

Seemed like a win-win, honestly. Jyn liked the idea of not only poking a sentient trafficker in the eye, but stealing a bunch of people out from under him.

“How short is our timeline?” she asked.

“As short as possible,” Cassian said bluntly. “The longer we stay, the more likely we are to blow our cover. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of days for my fake credit to be confirmed. As soon as Nabeshin’s happy with it, I’ll leave.”

“And I change hands.” Absorbed in discussing the details, Jyn had almost forgotten that part of the plan. She suppressed a nervous shiver. 

“Right.” Cassian still sounded grim. “Nabeshin spends most of his time on the Keppro orbital installation, so I’m assuming that he’ll head straight back after our business is concluded. If not, I’ll plant some kind of false message to encourage him to get up there.”

“Okay.” Jyn swallowed and carefully kept her expression open and neutral. Best to get all of the mission parameters established now. “Any direction on how friendly you want me to be? Should I try and keep him busy until—”

“What?” Cassian choked on the word and spots of colour rose in his face. Jyn had seen him angry quite often (mostly at her), but she’d never seen him so furious he couldn’t speak. “You thought I—” he broke off and muttered under his breath, a harsh string of impressively filthy curses she only recognized a third of. “You thought we were literally asking you to sell yourself for the Rebellion?”

“Yes? Wasn’t that the whole point, after all Draven’s talk about needing a specific type of agent?” Jyn didn’t understand why Cassian was suddenly so delicate.

Grifka’s breath hissed through her nasal tubes in short, hard bursts that sounded like an angry kettle. “What the hell kind of army do you think this is? I don’t know how the Partisans ran things, but the Alliance does not expect our agents to submit to sexual assault.”

Jyn blinked. Her gut was bubbling up with relief or anxiety, or maybe both. “But the whole point is that I’m supposed to get close to Nabeshin. Doesn’t that mean…?”

Cassian ran his hand through his hair, frustration leaking out in his body language. “All you have to do is get to their orbital installation so that I can track you there, Jyn,” he said. “It’s a short-term mission and we’ll play it as cautiously as we can. I’ll wait until the last minute so that you don’t have to spend any more time alone with Nabeshin than absolutely necessary.” He looked directly into her eyes and his voice was hard, uncompromising. “Take him out if you have to. You’re authorized to defend yourself, do you understand?” 

Jyn didn’t, but she nodded. What was the point of being so squeamish about using her body? If it came down to a choice between not completing the mission and getting up close and personal with some scumbucket, she’d take the latter. She’d had to do worse, after all. Probably.

Cassian shifted on his feet. “One more thing,” he said in a blatant attempt to change the subject. “You can’t bring your necklace. I’m sorry, but it’s just too unusual and identifiable—”

“No, I get it,” Jyn said hastily. _That_ actually made sense, and she wouldn't want to risk losing it anyway. “I’ll leave it with Bodhi.” 

Grifka hopped down off her stool and grabbed a set of digital calipers from the workbench. “Erso needs a fitting, and then it'll take me the rest of the day to program her identichip.”

“Nothing too elaborate,” Cassian said. “We’re not setting her up as an independent source, just Spero’s plus one, so she won’t need a long data trail. Maybe a few arrests to make it convincing.”

“I can help,” Jyn offered. “I’ve had to create a few of my own over the years. I got pretty good at slicing into law enforcement datacores when I needed to make something go away.”

Grifka looked at Cassian and he nodded in confirmation. “She’s good.” 

Jyn tucked her chin down in an effort to hide the pleased little smile that wanted to tug at her mouth. 

“Then get lost, Andor,” Grifka said. “I don’t need to see you again before tomorrow night.” 

 

“Pick a name.” Grifka held a stack of datachips out to Jyn, fanned in her hand like a deck of cards. “These are all basic templates that roughly fit your species, physical description, and age. We’ll refine them into something more specific.”

Jyn’s hand hovered over the chips—was she going to be Oyuna, Iris, Keelah, or Shir? Keelah felt best, she decided, selecting that one.

“Good. You can get started on the identity while I pull together wardrobe.” Grifka logged Jyn into the terminal and started digging through the bins stacked high on the shelves, talking to herself and pulling out various items of clothing, none of which looked like anything Jyn had ever worn before. Bright colours, flimsy fabrics and low-cut necklines weren’t exactly de rigeur fashion for Partisans and crooks. 

The Lieutenant seemed friendly enough, in a casual way; maybe Jyn could get a little background out of her. “Why is everyone so tied up in knots about this op?” she asked. “It seems pretty simple, honestly.”

“Rebel Intelligence was decimated at Scarif; we don’t have a lot of resources remaining.” Grifka’s sigh wheezed long and low. “Andor’s the only one left with a cover ID that would pass the sniff test with these scum, but he’s not Nabeshin’s type. He couldn’t make it work without a partner.”

Jyn focused on her own hands, mechanically entering data. “So there really was no-one else to ask?” 

“No.” Grifka yanked on a button, testing its hold. “The kid who’d probably have been the first choice didn’t make it back from Scarif. And the next best is recovering from an injury he got during the Yavin 4 evac. Frankly, our options are pretty limited right now.”

“I knew it had to be something like that,” Jyn muttered. “Draven wouldn’t have asked me if he wasn’t desperate."

Grifka looked up. “Oh, he was fine with it. Andor was the one digging in his heels.”

The kriffing wampa-brain really didn’t believe he could depend on her. Jyn felt her jaw clench. 

“Don’t take it personally,” Grifka said quickly; Jyn thought she was trying to be kind. “Andor’s just nervous. You may have noticed that he likes to be over-prepared, and Operation Bazaar is a clusterfuck waiting to happen. Time pressure, skimpy background intel, and a novice partner? No offence,” she added, and Jyn shrugged to say _none taken_. “This has to be his worst nightmare.” 

Jyn stared at the glowing lines of text until they melted into a blur. She refused to doubt herself. Let everyone else disbelieve; she knew she could do this, and she was not going to let Draven’s mistrust or Cassian’s apprehension intimidate her. Screw them all.

Grifka sorted through another bin of clothes, pulling out shirts and skirts and examining them closely before adding them to her pile or tossing them back in the bin. She mumbled something about Jyn’s height and draped a gauzy length of spangled fabric over her shoulder, wrinkling her face skeptically. 

“Is that supposed to be a dress?” Jyn asked. It would barely cover her ass. 

“Yes.” Grifka dumped a bundle of clothes in her lap. “Now try these on while I check over your new ID.” 

 

In retrospect, it might have been better to be less direct. 

But Jyn had just spent ten minutes examining herself in the supply depot's holographic mirror. The clothes Grifka had found were fine—well, not fine, but impractical and flimsy enough to give her a whole new aura, and the makeup they’d slathered on her face helped too. 

Something was still missing, though; she didn’t look fragile enough. It had taken Jyn longer than it should have to figure it out, but then it came to her while she was changing back into her own clothes—if she were already a little banged up when Nabeshin saw her, it would give her the hint of vulnerability she needed. 

In her excitement at solving the problem, she barged into Cassian’s room without knocking and demanded, “Hit me.”

Cassian had been carefully packing clothes into a duffel sitting on his bed. His hands stopped and the line of his back froze defensively stiff. “What did you say?”

“I need a bruise,” Jyn explained. 

“A bruise,” he repeated in a flat tone, turning around.

“Yeah, it’ll reinforce the idea that I’m not a threat.” She tapped her cheekbone. “I was thinking of a black eye, but if you’d rather slap me, that could work too. As long as you make sure to give me a split lip or something.”

Cassian was still staring at her. A crease hovered at the corner of his mouth that looked like anger. “You want me to hit you.”

“Yes,” she said impatiently. “I could walk into a door or something, but it wouldn’t look the same. And I’d hesitate; it’s harder than you think to hurt yourself on purpose.”

Cassian blinked, but didn’t say anything, and she felt stupid. Of course he’d know that.

“Why do you need Cassian to do it? That seems unnecessary,” K-2 put in. Why was the droid even here, and why did he have to add his opinion? Jyn wished he’d shut up.

“It does, rather,” Cassian said. “Can’t you let someone land a hit on you while you’re sparring?”

Jyn stared at him, unimpressed. “Really? After your big speech about how we were going to be different people? Well, you're going to be Dorian Spero, and he smacks his dates around. So get used to it.”

“If you keep mouthing off, he might well.” Somehow Kay’s metallic, unmodulated tone managed to sound sarcastic. 

Jyn rolled her eyes and huffed at Kay. Cassian’s lips twitched and she caught the edge of a smile before he covered his mouth with his hand. The tension in the room lightened. Maybe that was why Kay had said it; sometimes she thought the droid understood more about human interactions than he let on.

“Please?” she said. 

He closed his eyes and sighed. “Fine,” he muttered, flexing his hand. “Kay, make yourself useful and go get a cold pack for Jyn’s face.”

Jyn scoffed. “I doubt Dorian would bother with that.”

Cassian looked down at her and frowned. “I say Dorian is the kind of asshole who hits someone and then thinks he can make nice. Besides, if you really want this to work, the bruising should be subtle, not obvious. So you're going to ice it.”

He moved to stand square in front of Jyn, a few careful steps away. He reached out and touched her cheek lightly with two fingers, gauging the distance. “Close your eyes.”

“I won’t flinch,” Jyn argued. 

“Just do it,” he said in the glacially calm voice she’d come to recognize meant he wasn’t going to listen to any further arguments. 

She huffed in annoyance again but closed her eyes. Fortunately Cassian didn’t give her time to anticipate the blow, and he didn’t hold back. His open-handed slap rocked her head back and cracked her neck.

Jyn blinked open watery eyes and grinned at him. “That’s more like it.” She probed her stinging lip with her tongue and winced. Cassian looked away. “See? Not so bad. The worst is over.”

She hoped she wasn’t lying.

 

If you’d asked Jyn yesterday, she’d have said that it wasn’t possible for Cassian to look sleazy—but holy Force, she’d have been wrong. The straitlaced, stern Intelligence agent she knew had transformed into the kind of two-credit loser she’d been hit on by in dozens of spaceport cantinas across the galaxy.

His pants were so tight she wasn’t sure he could bend over without indecency; his shirt was undone two buttons too far for dignity. His long hair was slicked back at the sides but still hung lank over his brow. And his beard had been trimmed into a goatee that looked like something out of a terrible holodrama about spice smugglers. Even his posture was completely different, looser and hip-shot in a way that was very obviously intended as an advertisement.

She clapped a hand over her mouth, fighting not to laugh.

“Go on, get it out of your system,” Cassian sighed. At least his voice sounded the same; if he’d been using a different accent as well she might have lost it completely. 

“Were you aiming for Corellian gigolo?” Jyn tilted her head to the side and examined the shiny weave of his garish shirt. “Because I think you overshot the landing pad. By quite a bit.”

“Is that the best you’ve got?”

“Not even close.” She grinned at him. “Looking like that, I wouldn’t let you set foot on any ship I didn’t want stolen.” 

“But would you let me buy you a drink?” He winked at her and somehow, on his face, the suggestive leer was oddly charming.

Jyn wrinkled her nose. “Maybe, if I wasn’t worried about catching something.”

“Enough jokes,” Grifka said. “Get dressed, Erso. Your launch window’s in thirty minutes.” 

Jyn ducked behind the curtain and slipped into one of the outfits she and Grifka had put together for Keelah. Remembering to be delicate was annoying. Jyn kept wanting to stride along at her usual pace; instead, she had to remember to walk slowly, with a slight sway in her hips. At least the heels on the flimsy sandals helped make that easier.

Cassian’s eyes widened and he gave her a very obvious, in-character inspection from the loose waves of hair falling over her shoulders (which would be a nightmare in a fight) to the short, flowing skirt that swirled around her thighs. Placing her feet carefully, Jyn minced over to stand beside him. She’d never admit it, but it was kind of enjoyable the way the stupid shoes boosted her closer to his height.

The two of them looked back to meet Grisha’s evaluating gaze. Her nose folded into creases and she sighed, whistling. “A little physical contact, please. Remember, you have to act like a breeding pair of humans.”

Jyn bit back a laugh at the Skrilling’s turn of phrase. That would be easy; Cassian touched her all the time. She was so used to his hand on her back or her shoulder that she’d come to expect it by now. 

But this was different. His arm clamped around her and pulled her against him, his fingers digging into her hip. She couldn’t help twitching in surprise as his hand slid lower and grabbed her ass—hard. Not that Jyn objected to a little ass-grabbing; it was just very unlike Cassian. 

She looked up at him, but his face was blank and unreadable, the raffish charm of earlier vanished. She’d forgotten, because he let her see more of him sometimes, that he was still able to put on a mask whenever he chose. She swallowed down her nerves. Better to be reminded of that now. 

“Not bad,” Grifka said. “But you’re going to have to act a bit less like a nervous virgin, Erso.” 

Cassian said, “She doesn’t have to be that convincing. Dorian’s paying for Keelah’s company. No reason for her to be enthused.”

Jyn gritted her teeth. Cassian didn’t need to make excuses for her; she could do this. She turned within the circle of his arm to put her hand tentatively on his chest, her forefinger barely grazing the skin revealed by his unbuttoned shirt. She trailed it down and down until her thumb was tucked just behind the buckle of his belt, her fingers splayed over his stomach muscles. They were tense; Cassian’s whole body was still rigid against hers. She looked up at him through her lashes, but his face was just as impenetrable. 

Grifka clapped her palms together in a heavy approving beat. Jyn jolted out of Cassian’s grip, pulling her hand away from him. “Much better! That actually looked like you two had some idea of how to reproduce. Now get going.”

Cassian slipped on his jacket and tucked his scandocs into the pockets. Jyn picked up the small case that held Keelah’s makeup and frivolous clothes and took a deep breath, pushing all her anxiety behind a smooth, vacant façade.

“Last thing.” Grifka handed Jyn a silver chain with a bean-shaped pendant hanging from it. “Sorry about the delay, but it took a while to formulate.”

“What is it?” Jyn asked, examining the solid lump of silver metal. “Another tracker?”

“Lullaby pill,” Grifka said. “In the event of unavoidable compromise, rip the pendant off and swallow the whole thing.”

Jyn’s fingers opened involuntarily and the necklace dropped to the floor. “No.”

“You’d rather be tortured?” Cassian said, brutally blunt. “Until you give up this location? Anything and everything else you know? There’s a reason it’s standard issue for undercover ops, Jyn.”

“Of course I don’t want to be tortured!” Her hands had tightened into fists, her new fake nails biting into her palms, and she had to consciously relax before she broke them off. “But these people aren’t Imperials. They don’t care about Alliance secrets, they just want to make money.”

Jyn stared down at the tangle of silver links. She couldn’t meet Cassian’s eyes. She didn’t want him to think she was a coward, but something about the cold-blooded calculus of it made her shudder. No, the Alliance wouldn’t expect her to fuck people on a mission, they just wanted her to swallow poison if necessary. Saw had asked his people to be ready to give their lives for the cause, too, but only in combat. 

“They probably work for the Imperials,” Grifka said, an irritated whistle in her voice. “That’s the whole point of this op.”

“And they could make a lot of money off what we know.” Cassian sounded weary now. Jyn wondered where his lullaby was concealed: sewn into his jacket, or hidden in his belt buckle? All his solitary undercover work in dangerous places, balancing on the razor edge of discovery... how many times had he held it in his hand? How many times had he almost swallowed it?

“Fine.” She stooped to pick the necklace up from the cold duracrete and threw it over her head. “Let’s go.” 

Her fingers ran along the chain and rubbed over the smooth, cold surface of the lullaby pill. She'd carry it, but she’d never use it, she swore to herself. Jyn knew how to get under someone’s skin: taunt them, hurt them, make them mad enough, and they’d kill her long before she had to worry about spilling any secrets.

From the way Cassian looked at her, she was pretty sure he knew what she was thinking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter just kept getting longer and longer, so I had to cut it off somewhere and this seemed the logical end point. I promise there will be actual Undercover Shenanigans™ in Chapter 3.
> 
> Content notes: medical procedure (injection); mild violence (face slap); and discussion of suicide, in the context of lullaby pills.


	3. Chapter 3

Two hyperspace jumps in eight hours: plenty of time en route for Jyn to settle into her cover and try to become more comfortable as Keelah. So she left the stupid shoes on (instead of taking them off and propping her bare feet on the console like she would in her normal boots) and practiced mincing cautiously around the ship—across the cockpit, down the few steps along the short passage into the tiny cabin and back, over and over. 

She had to admire the attention to detail of whoever had put this op together. Was it all Grifka, or had Cassian and Draven helped too? They’d done a thorough job of building the illusion, from Keelah’s wardrobe to Dorian Spero’s ship. This cruiser was a flashy piece of junk; just the kind of vessel someone trying to impress people would buy without knowing that it wasn’t worth the credits. 

With each pass behind the pilot’s chair she made herself draw her hand across Cassian’s shoulders and the back of his neck. She had to get used to touching him casually, after all. The first time his muscles twitched under her fingertips and she could feel him resist the instinct to pull away; by her tenth circuit, he was dropping one hand from the controls to lazily brush her bare calf as she passed. 

Jyn was starting to feel like she could manage this. Being Keelah wasn’t so hard. Next time she went by, Keelah bumped his shoulder with her hip and winked at him. 

“Have you ever been to Tethart?” Cassian’s hands were busy at the controls and his eyes focused on readouts scrolling past, giving Jyn a chance to look at his hair and his clothes again and try to get used to them. It still tripped her up a little, every time she saw Dorian’s slicked-back hair and gaudy shirt out of the corner of her eyes.

“No,” she said, sitting gingerly in the copilot’s seat and tugging her skirt down to cover another centimetre. Then she remembered Keelah wouldn’t care and deliberately crossed her legs, raising her hem to mid-thigh. But Cassian didn’t look over, so he didn’t even see her getting into character. 

“It’s quite a place. Gas planet, like Bespin, but no large cities or mining installations. Popular among the shady rich because the only livable environment for most species are floating pods. It’s like living on a private island—very easy to keep the riffraff out. We’ve got reservations on a hotel pod that cost just slightly less than buying an entire Star Destroyer.”

Jyn huffed out a short laugh. She played with the hem of her skirt, pleating and releasing it between her fingers. “How’s the Alliance paying for it?”

“On credit.” Cassian rubbed the thumb and fingertips of one hand together. “One way or another, this cover will be useless after this op, so it doesn’t matter if Spero burns through all the money a gullible bank on Coruscant is willing to lend him.”

Jyn hadn’t thought about the money side of this op before—she was still a child of the Partisans in many ways, and they ran on donations and stolen goods. She’d forgotten that there were other ways to manipulate finances, most of which involved tech that could be sliced. In her loner days, she’d rarely tried to steal from big targets because they were guaranteed to be too much trouble for a single thief. With Alliance resources behind them, was there anything else she could do to fund Dorian’s venture? Jyn filed that question away for later consideration.

“How much surveillance should we expect?” Jyn shifted in her chair, finally kicking off the uncomfortable shoes. There was no point in torturing herself until she had to, after all. She stretched her legs, working out the cramps in her feet, and wiggled her toes, admiring the iridescent blue tint Grifka had painted on the nails—totally impractical, but kind of pretty.

“Hard to know until we get there.” Cassian shrugged. “I’d say video feeds in most public areas. Audio is less likely. Whether there’s anything in our room depends on how suspicious or paranoid Nabeshin is. Hopefully he’ll think Dorian is too small-time to worry about.”

Jyn twisted a strand of her hair between her fingers, absently brushing the feathery ends under her nose. The scented wash Grifka had given her smelled like poluo blossom, and she had a sudden vivid sense memory of Lyra hugging her before leaving for a party. Her mother’s perfume had been similar… She shook off the unwanted intrusion of memory and sat up straighter. “Okay, so we’ll probably be watched most of the time but not necessarily overheard.”

“Right.” Cassian checked the autopilot settings once more, pulled his headset off and stowed it in place with precise care. He didn’t look over at her. “We haven’t talked about physical contact.”

Jyn raised an eyebrow at him, valiantly holding on to her calm facial expression. “You can say the word sex, Cassian.”

He shook his head in irritation. “This isn’t a holodrama. I’ve never slept with someone to preserve my cover. If that’s the best option, you’re already too close to being compromised.”

“This is different, we’re going in together. And it’s not like they’re going to expect us to screw in front of them.” Jyn toyed with the hem of her skirt again, pinching it into pleats. “Are they?”

Cassian’s mouth twitched. “Highly unlikely. But people like Dorian and Keelah aren’t likely to have a lot of...” He paused while he searched for the right word. “Decorum in public. I know you’re not demonstrative, but—” 

To cut him off, Jyn stood up and dropped into his lap. She snaked one arm around his neck and played with the messy strands of hair falling in his eyes, pushing them out of his face and tracing the curve of his ear. Keelah, she repeated to herself. Keelah and Dorian. “Stop worrying. See? I can do it.”

Jyn had been hoping to startle Cassian, but she should have known better. He didn’t tense; she barely felt the instant of hesitation before he palmed her hip and settled her more firmly on his thighs. She tried not to wiggle her ass. There was close, and then there was _too_ close—like Cassian said.

“Fine, you’ve proved your point. But we still need a signal, something non-verbal that won’t seem suspicious for a couple.” With the hand that wasn’t resting on her hip he tugged at his earlobe in illustration. “If you need me to stop whatever I’m doing—pinch my ear, or...”

“Bite it?” Jyn suggested, to see if she could make him blush. But Cassian had gone into mission mode, too practical and hyper-focused for embarrassment.

“Sure, that’ll work.” He nodded.

“I thought I had to be prepared for anything,” Jyn needled him. “That you weren’t going to go easy on me.”

“I won’t,” he said. “That’s why I need to know you have a way to tell me to stop.”

“Same goes for you, then,” Jyn said. “If I go too far for you, use the ear thing.” She flicked his earlobe with her thumb.

She really ought to get off his lap now. It was stupid to keep this up just to prove a point; this wasn’t a kid’s game of dares. But Cassian wasn’t making her move, and his lean thighs were a surprisingly comfortable perch. She left her arm hooked around his shoulders and tucked her feet between the side of the chair and his thigh. Her skirt slid down, exposing even more leg. Cassian carefully didn’t look, though he cupped his warm hand over her bare knee to help her stay balanced on his lap.

He cleared his throat. “You seemed a little surprised at Grifka’s reaction. Is this the kind of thing the Partisans did a lot? Not judging,” he said hastily, “just curious.”

“It’s a natural weakness to exploit.” Jyn shrugged, twisting her fingers in the long hair at the back of his neck. “Saw used to, uh, encourage locals who were involved with garrison troopers to help us. If he couldn’t find anyone suitable, he’d set one of us up as a honeypot. Yeah, Imps aren’t supposed to fraternize, especially on planets with majority non-human populations, but that rule’s always broken. People are people. It happens.”

“It happens,” Cassian echoed, watching her sidelong through his eyelashes. “Were you ever one of the fraternizers?”

“Me?” Jyn laughed. “I was too young, and then too scrawny. I mostly played the street urchin—you know, the pitiful kid looking for food or a place to sleep.”

Cassian smiled in reminiscence. “Yeah, I used to run that a lot when I was young. Had a pretty good begging face, too. I wonder if I can still…” He turned his head away for a moment, and when he looked back at her his eyes were impossibly huge and dark, somehow giving the impression of unshed tears. His face was settled into the weary lines of someone who’d been kicked around by life and knew better than to expect any kindness, but couldn’t extinguish the tiniest glimmer of hope.

It was amazing, even without the added pathos of youth. If Jyn had ever seen Cassian on the streets as a ragged kid wearing that expression, she might have given him all her extra credits and one of her truncheons. And she’d never been a soft touch.

“Impressive,” Jyn managed to say through stiff lips. She hated it. Even though she knew it was all an act, she loathed seeing him look so miserable and defeated. When he broke into a smug grin at her praise, she felt better.

Cassian was absently rubbing the outside of her leg, brushing his thumb over her knee in soft arcs that flirted with the hem of her skirt. Jyn looked down at his hand and the movement stopped. 

“You should get some rest,” he said. “We’ve still got four hours before Tethart.”

Jyn didn’t want to admit it, but she hadn’t slept well the night before. She’d thought she was long past pre-mission jitters, but apparently going undercover with Cassian was enough to bring them back. She nodded, stumbled out of Cassian’s lap, and fled the cockpit. 

 

The landing was a little careless, bumpier than Cassian would have made it; apparently his acting abilities extended to his piloting skills and Dorian just wasn’t that good. Jyn’s palms were clammy—she pressed them against her skirt to blot the moisture, balancing her weight carefully in the useless shoes as she followed her partner to the hatch. 

Cassian looked over his shoulder at her one last time. “Ready?”

She nodded firmly. “Yeah.”

He offered an encouraging smile and hit the ramp button. “Then here we go.” 

The smile evaporated from his face and Dorian reappeared, sleazy and calculating. He went ahead as they stepped off the ramp; Keelah followed slowly, letting her surprise show as she gazed wide-eyed at the glittering, hazy horizon. She couldn’t stop staring. It was like being on top of one of the pyramids on Yavin 4 except that instead of forest canopy, they were surrounded by nothing but billowing, softly tinted clouds in shades of green and orchid. Here and there other habitat pods floated serenely in the distance, shining jewels reflecting the diffuse light of the setting sun. 

“Welcome to Tethart, gentlebeings.” A courtesy droid whirred up to them, its rolling feet balancing easily on the smooth deck. “The Hotel Domino hopes you enjoy your stay.”

Even these spaceship docks were polished and gleaming, hardly a drop of coolant or a streak of rust to be seen anywhere. The ship they’d just stepped off of was probably the shabbiest thing on the whole planet.

“Mister Nabeshin extends his greetings and asks that you meet him in the public lounge in half a standard hour. In the meantime, may I show you to your suite?”

“Come on, Keelah,” Dorian said, and yanked at her wrist. 

Keelah smiled vacantly and clung to his hand as they followed the droid down a sweeping walkway open to the clouds. There were clear glass barriers on both sides, of course, but Jyn noted how easy it would be to shove someone over the side anyway, and wondered if there were any force fields below to catch people who fell, accidentally or otherwise.

Then she tried as hard as she could to turn off the part of her brain that noticed these things and immerse herself in Keelah: young, provincial, and easily impressed by the beautiful glimmering surface of things. 

Their suite was predictably lavish and ostentatious, if more tasteful than she’d expected. Jyn didn’t have time for more than a quick scan of the furniture—it looked like real kriin-wood, holy shavit—and the wide balcony overlooking the sea of clouds before she had to get ready for their meeting with Nabeshin.

Cassian began a preliminary sweep of all the possible hiding places for surveillance equipment while Jyn dumped Keelah’s cosmetics over the fresher counter and reapplied her lipstick. She stared at herself in the mirror, but all she could see looking back at her was Keelah: wide-eyed, expensively dressed, and definitely fragile-looking. She dabbed a little more powder on her nose, adjusted the draped neckline of her gauzy top and fluffed out her hair. Then there was nothing left for her to do. 

“Dorian? Aren’t you ready yet?” she called over her shoulder.

“Don’t be so clingy, Keelah. I’ve got a few things to take care of first. Just go down and wait for me at the bar.” As Cassian moved past her to check the mirror, he dipped his head and whispered in her ear, “Make sure you’re seen.”

Jyn nodded. “Sure thing, _honey_.”

 

She didn't have to feign nervousness as she crossed and uncrossed her legs, trying to get comfortable on the high stool. The bar droid dropped off Keelah’s drink—something electric blue with fruit and flowers in it rather than the straight shot of liquor Jyn would have preferred—and she tried to sip at it delicately instead of tossing it back for her nerves. She hadn’t even had to say a word as Keelah to anyone but Dorian and a few droids and she was already anxious and sweating. 

_Focus_. She looked up through her lashes at the mirror behind the bar, scanning the room. Nabeshin was seated at an elevated booth in the corner. From there he could watch the whole place, including the entrance, and he’d definitely seen her come in. She threw her hair back over one shoulder and toyed with the straw in her drink, shifting so that her skirt rode a little higher. She was so intent on laying the bait that she was actually startled when Cassian—Dorian—slid up behind her. 

He put his hands on her hips and spun her stool around. Her higher perch put them at almost the same level; it meant that she could look him straight in the eye without craning her neck, and that Dorian didn’t have to lean down when he kissed Keelah. 

The first touch of his mouth was warm and soft in contrast to the slight abrasion of his beard against her split lip. His kiss was suggestive, almost too crude for a public place, and far less earnest than she’d have expected from Cassian—but then, it wasn’t Cassian kissing her. Jyn flinched almost imperceptibly, the tiniest backward jerk of her head, and the man kissing her started to pull away. 

No. She refused to fail her first serious test. If Nabeshin was supposed to notice them, then kark it, she’d make him look.

Keelah put her hands at Dorian’s waist and tugged him closer by his belt loops. He stumbled a step closer, his tongue driving into her mouth unexpectedly, and she opened her knees so that his body could slot in between them, falling against hers and knocking the breath out of her lungs. She gasped into the kiss and felt him do the same. When she drew away slowly, lingeringly, she pulled his bottom lip between her teeth.

Dorian rested his forehead against hers, his breathing already heavier, and smiled a little nastily. “Miss me already?” 

Her mouth twisted for an instant and she bit back a sharp retort.

Dorian ran his palms up her arms, feeling the rapid rise and fall of her ribcage shift them, plunged his hands in her hair and adjusted the angle of her head to his liking before he kissed her again. It was thrilling, intoxicating, but it was all wrong. This wasn’t how she’d imagined it, how she’d wanted it… Enough. She had to stop being so childish and thinking about things that were irrelevant. She needed to be on the ball, paying attention to what was going on around them instead of daydreaming.

Dorian pressed into her mouth, his tongue a little deeper, hungrier, and Keelah let her head fall back to give him full control over the kiss. So far, so good; she’d certainly been labelled as his plaything to everyone in the bar. 

When he drew back in turn, Keelah licked her lips and watched him blink. “Nabeshin’s in the corner,” she whispered.

“I saw.” His eyes were shuttered, blank and unreadable. 

“He’s coming over now,” she reported. Her fingers tightened on his belt involuntarily, and somehow Cassian reappeared for a millisecond; he gave her shoulders a tiny, encouraging squeeze. Then he turned at Nabeshin’s greeting, and his face fell back into the vacant, thoughtless expression of someone who didn’t have any greater concerns than where his next drink was coming from.

“Barrett! Good to see you again.” Jyn saw the other man’s tiny grimace of distaste at being addressed so familiarly, even while he shook hands and slapped Dorian’s back in that overly hearty way of men who were trying to impress each other.

“Dorian. Hope you’ve been enjoying yourself on Tethart so far.”

“Of course.” Dorian clapped Nabeshin on the shoulder again, a fraction too hard. “But I didn’t come here just for fun, though that’s always a bonus!”

Ignoring Dorian’s opening for business talk, Nabeshin turned to her instead. “Well, well. Who’s this lovely, refined creature?”

Jyn thought she deserved an acting award for not bursting into laughter in the man’s face. Keelah simpered and daintily held out her manicured fingertips. “Pleasure to meet you, sir.”

“This is Keelah.” Dorian’s hand tightened possessively around her upper arm. Jyn almost elbowed him, but managed to keep still. What was he doing? A jealous Dorian wasn’t part of the plan; he was supposed to be ready to shed Keelah like a dirty shirt.

Nabeshin clasped her hand lightly for a moment and smiled at her, wide but empty. He didn’t bother to make his thorough evaluation of her face and body subtle. When he noticed the mark on her cheek that Jyn had carefully only half-concealed with makeup, his eyes sharpened and he looked at her with a familiar hunger. She held her shoulders still, repressing a shudder, and kept her own smile fixed, as though she were too dim to realize that he thought of her as prey.

“What do you think of Tethart so far?”

“Simply stunning,” Keelah sighed, pulling her hand out of his and hoping the gesture came across as flirtatious rather than disgusted. “I’ve never been anywhere so lovely.”

“You won’t see the best of it in a place like this.” He looked around the opulent bar with disdain, and Jyn blinked at the scorn in his voice. A single night in this place cost more than she’d need to survive on for six months, and he thought it was beneath him?

Nabeshin turned back to Dorian. “Why don’t you come stay at my villa? It’ll give us plenty of time for business and that way, I can get to know both of you better as well.”

“Very generous of you to offer.” Dorian gave a tense, tight-lipped grin. “But I wouldn’t want to impose.”

What the fuck was Cassian up to? The target was giving them a perfect in, why was he backing off? Or maybe this was a ploy, and she was supposed to step in.

“Oh, I’d _love_ to!” Keelah exclaimed, sliding her hand up Dorian’s arm and putting a pleading note in her voice. “Couldn’t we, Dorian? I’ve never seen a floating villa.”

“Come on, Spero,” Nabeshin chimed in. “Let the lady have her way.”

“Whatever she wants,” Dorian finally acquiesced, sounding as enthusiastic as a Jedi about to stay overnight in a whorehouse. 

“Wonderful.” Nabeshin took out a sleek comlink and tapped away at it. “There, I’ve sent you the coordinates and a guest access code. Arrive whenever you want, just be in time for dinner at eight.” 

With a casual wave, he turned and strolled toward the exit. “Don’t worry, I’ll settle your bill here,” he threw over his shoulder as he passed the bar. 

Dorian stood tense beside her as Keelah said brightly, “That went well!” She grabbed her drink, tossed the rest of it back, and pivoted on her heel to head for the door. She didn’t see any point in hanging around when they could gather up their things and get over to Nabeshin’s villa as soon as possible.

Before she reached the hall Dorian was right behind her, pacing her stride for stride so closely that she almost stumbled. As soon as they were out of the bar he took her by the shoulders and spun her around. Jyn nearly gasped as her back made contact with the wall and Cassian leaned into her, rubbing his nose along her cheek in a gesture that would look to anyone watching as though he were hungrily mouthing along her jaw. She shivered, trying to think, as he growled in her ear, “Don’t do that again.” 

The undisguised anger in his voice made her blink. “What?”

“Don’t jump out in front and agree to something like that again without checking first. You promised to let me take the lead.”

“We’re _partners_ ,” she hissed into his ear, venting her frustration by digging her fingers into his shoulders as though she were desperate to pull him closer. “And that invitation was a perfect opening, so I went for it.”

“It means we have absolutely no control. You’ve put us in his hands. If he decides he doesn’t like any little thing about the deal it could go very, very wrong.”

“We’ll be in his own home,” she whispered with the force of a shout. “Think of everything we could find there—his personal databanks...”

“That’s not what we’re here for.” Cassian dropped his head to speak into her throat and his hair brushed, tickling and distracting, over her neck. “And wherever he puts us is going to be packed with surveillance equipment. So I hope you’re prepared to live this role full-time, because that’s what you’ve just gotten us into.”

Shit. Jyn had been so enthralled by the prospect of getting into Nabeshin’s personal space she hadn’t even considered the fact that she’d just made it much easier for them to be watched all the time. She swallowed, her skin crawling at the thought. If they couldn’t slip out of the masks of Dorian and Keelah for even an instant… 

Some of her stiff panic must have been evident to Cassian, because he sighed against her skin and dragged his hands away from the wall where they were braced on either side of her head. He cupped her shoulders in his hands and rested his forehead against hers. “It is a good opportunity. We’ll make it work, okay? Just please, don’t pull something like that again without warning me.”

Jyn nodded and tried to relax. The hands on her shoulder felt comforting, even if they belonged to Dorian more than Cassian at the moment.

 

Dinner tonight would be Keelah’s best chance to make an impression so Jyn dug through her suitcase and pulled out the most eye-catching outfit Grifka had selected for her. If seeing her in this didn’t intrigue Nabeshin, they might as well pack it up and go back to base. 

She stepped into the pool of fluid green lashaa-silk and drew it up over her hips. There seemed to be some kind of law of conservation of fabric when it came to Keelah’s clothes—if they covered her chest, there was barely enough of them to cover her ass, and vice versa. This particular dress was floor-length, which meant the top was nothing but two skimpy triangles of fabric that tied together with a ribbon at the nape of Jyn’s neck. Most of her chest was left bare by the deep vee neckline cut down almost to her waist. All that kept it decent to wear in public was that her breasts were small; if they were any bigger, she’d have to worry about flashing the entire room whenever she moved. The cursed lullaby pendant dangled between them, drawing the eye every time she breathed as it shifted back and forth on its long silver chain.

Jyn pinned her hair up in back to reveal the knotted ribbon, as per Grisha’s instructions (“people are supposed to notice that if they untied that, you’d be naked”), swiped on some more eyeshadow and a darker lipcolour, and chose a pair of shoes she could more or less walk in. With the little wand Grifka had shown her how to use, she changed the polish on her toes to an emerald green just a shade darker than the dress. Since she hadn’t bothered to unpack earlier, all she had left to do was scoop her toiletries back into her luggage and she was done. She glanced around the room for anything forgotten, checked that the knot of her halter was securely tied yet again, and walked out into the sitting room of the suite.

Cassian was propped in a casual lean against an overstuffed arm of the massive sofa, arms crossed over his chest and his own suitcase by his feet. He had put on a more subdued shirt and a jacket, but still looked fairly informal. A pang of anxiety cramped Jyn’s belly and she smoothed one hand down over her skirt. Had she overdressed? Maybe she should have stayed with the outfit she’d been wearing earlier.

He looked up when she stepped through the door but didn’t speak, didn’t make any reaction at all; he froze stiff and unmoving like he’d been dumped in carbonite. His expression was as blank as a wiped datachip.

Was that good or bad? Jyn held her breath, inexplicably nervous about him seeing her in this get-up. It was so foreign to her it didn’t seem real—she felt like an actress in a holovid. Of course, that was more or less what she was at the moment. 

Cassian swallowed and got to his feet slowly. “You look… perfect.” 

“Thanks.” She couldn’t look at him any longer, so she bent down and fiddled unnecessarily with the clasp of her ankle strap. “At least it should get his attention.” She was happy Cassian had declared the suite clear of audio monitoring; it gave them one last moment of not having to govern every word too closely.

Cassian stayed silent, and when she straightened back up he’d brought one hand up to cover his eyes and was rubbing at his temples. He said grimly, “This would have been so much easier if I were his type.” 

A skittish laugh escaped Jyn before she realized he was perfectly serious. “I hope that doesn’t mean you’d do all the things you told me I didn’t have to.” 

He shrugged. “At least it would be my choice and not something I was forced into.”

“Listen to me.” She stomped over, her heels driving into the deep pile of the carpet, and grabbed Cassian’s face, cupping her hands around his jaw. He went motionless under her hands. With gentle pressure she tilted his head down to make his eyes meet hers. “ _I_ decided to do this. I’ll decide what I’m okay with, and you just have to back me up. What you said about obeying orders… I’ll do what you tell me to, but you have to be confident that I will disobey if I need to.”

Cassian’s gaze darted away over her shoulder and he wet his lips, a tell she hadn’t seen from him in a long time. This op really was making him nervous. “Okay.”

“Are we?” she asked, trying not to sound like she was begging, but desperate enough to ask for reassurance out loud. This might be her last chance to talk to Cassian for who knew how long. Her voice was thin and thready and it was an effort to push the words out through her dry lips. “I trust you. Do you trust me?”

Cassian’s eyes came back to meet hers, dark and with something she couldn’t read under his usual hard-held composure. “Yes.” 

Jyn realized she was still cradling his head in her hands, her thumbs moving across his jaw in an unconscious caress, and with a guilty sinking in the pit of her stomach she pulled away. He caught her wrists and gave them a small, reassuring squeeze, shaking her arms for emphasis. “You’re doing really well so far. We can do this. We just need to trust each other and focus on the objective. Are you with me?”

Jyn twisted her hands around to clasp Cassian’s wrists in turn and held on, anchoring herself in his assurance. “All the way.” She smiled at him, trying to be fierce and brave. She couldn’t let herself get maudlin or the tears would smudge her artful makeup.

“Good.” He smiled back. “We’ve got this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the long delay! I haven't forgotten about this story; Chapter 3 just kept growing (and growing) until I had to cut it in half. I hope to have Chapter 4 done before I go on vacation at the end of the month.

**Author's Note:**

> At the moment I'm estimating this will be around 5 chapters and 20,000 words long (saying this mostly so we can all laugh at the inaccuracy later).


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